The present invention relates generally to a hand-holdable housing for devices used in the conduct of manual and repetitive operations. More particularly, it relates to ergonomically featured housings and devices grippable in multi-modal fashion for mitigation or alleviation of the discomfort, fatigue and stresses commonly associated with the performance of oft-repeated manipulations.
The need for ergonomic designs for the facilitation of dexterous operations is well known; and the need for such designs will be especially acute where the operations are particularly awkward or repetitive. It is desirable, for instance, in semi-automated and automated manufacturing operations to collect production and quality data regarding different articles of manufacture, for a variety of reasons, including the monitoring of various manufacturing and assembly steps, warehouse management, inventory control, shipping and receiving. In the data-collection field, hand-held imagers or readers have gained wide-spread acceptance. Typically, these imagers illuminate machine readable symbols, such as bar code, and read the illuminated data, whether the latter is represented in so-called one or two dimensional symbologies. Symbologies of, for example, the two-dimensional kind are preferred in many situations because they offer flexibility in terms of their different sizes and the fact that they can be positioned in a variety of different locations on the articles. However, the enhanced versatility offered by such symbologies creates a need for imagers that are correspondingly versatile in terms of reading the encoded data regardless of size, type and location of such symbologies.
Examples of these imagers are represented by U.S. Pat. No.: 5,200,597 issued to Eastman et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,477,044 issued to Aragon; U.S. Pat. No. 5,591,952 issued to Krichever et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,606,160 issued to Tani et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,627,366 issued to Katz; U.S. Pat. No. 5,656,803 issued to Seo; U.S. Pat. No. 5,672,858 issued to Li et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,348 issued to Suzuki et al. Despite the existence of numerous imagers, a desire exists for further improvements, particularly in areas of minimizing discomfort, fatigue and potential injury attributable to repetitive uses, as well as for enhancing overall ergonomic usage and improved versatility of operation. This is especially so when inspecting articles bearing a variety of symbologies in different forms and in differing locations on such articles. Such symbologies can be present, for example, on manufactured parts positioned on an assembly belt or other work station in a relatively horizontal position in relation to a worker intent on reading the symbology. Similarly, the symbology may appear in a relatively vertical orientation, requiring that the imager be held differently and as needed to accomplish the data-collection task.
Hand held imagers for the reading of symbologies are commonly in the nature of pistol devices that are especially suited to the reading of symbologies that are in a generally vertical plane. It will be appreciated that the utilization of a pistol-type imager for the reading of symbologies on parts positioned in a horizontal plane (e.g., on a table top, assembly belt or like work station) will necessitate considerable wrist flexure and associated discomfort as the leading portion of the device is aimed downwardly toward the horizontal plane.
Because of the variances at which the symbologies can be placed as well as their type, heretofore known imagers are not as versatile in terms of being able to be gripped by a user, especially in a manner that enhances ergonomic operation thereof.